A Few Notes on The Eminence

The Eminence, without a doubt, is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I think it’s my best work to date technically, and its plot is probably the most solidified. I have a better grasp of my characters, and I have better and less trite vocabulary.

But it isn’t just that.

The Eminence was extracted straight out of my soul. The Knowers—maybe because it was my first piece of fiction I knew people would read—is kind of a watered-down Nina. But The Eminence isn’t. I don’t sugarcoat anything. I try not to shy away from awkwardness. I had a story and I told it and I tried not to put anything between me and my words.

After reading some of it, my dad pointed out that The Eminence was a kind of therapy for me. Because the majority of it was written during my junior year and the summer following, a lot of the stuff I was dealing with comes out over the course of the book. I was in AP Chemistry, so you’ll see a lot of chemistry references. I was starting to love architecture, so you’ll get a lot of buildings. I began to see more types of people, more ways in which they could interact, and more ways for them to work together, so you’ll watch as I experiment with characters and take some risks that I think (and hope) worked out.

This is the closest to date I’ve gotten to letting my guard down and writing what I feel without any barriers. Let’s see how it went, then, shall we?

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